1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer e-commerce. More specifically, embodiments of the present invention relate to methods and systems for facilitating the sale of classified ad items by supplementing print and online classified ads with e-commerce capabilities.
2. Description of the Related Art
Newspapers serve two primary roles: delivering news content, and facilitating a local/regional marketplace. Surprisingly, despite increased competition, for this $61 billion/year consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer marketplace in the United States, featuring more than 100 million classified advertisements, newspaper classified advertising has remained essentially unchanged since its introduction over 300 years ago.
In addition to competition in the print media, the newspaper industry now faces intense competition from various on-line service providers for classified advertising, as well. For example, the advent of internet-based merchants, such as eBay, has challenged the role of newspapers in their respective local and regional marketplaces.
While most newspapers now have online versions of their classified ads, the online versions are direct representations of the content presented in the newspaper, simply providing the same content as in print without taking advantage of online ad enhancement and transaction capabilities. As a result, of these and other shortcomings newspapers are already losing more than 15% of their classified listings annually.